


the voice someone calls

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [19]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: headcanons for the start of 5.0, my WoL, sorry not sory, this is just an excuse to write suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 12:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: “Warrior,” G’raha Tia, a mockery of her once friend speaks. His fingers have stopped their movements; the tower is silent, save for a humming she is not even certain does not originate from her own mind to fill the cavernous chamber. “It’s time.”No, she wants to say.No more. I want to rest. I want to disappear.“I’m ready,” she lies..Drabble for the start of 5.0.





	the voice someone calls

**Author's Note:**

> Patch 4.56 did not bring me enough suffering, so I wrote my own.

In the centre of the Crystal Tower she huddles close to the glimmering walls, head in her hands and nails bitten to the quick. The reflections she has been made to see haunt her: thirteen existences of hers and almost-hers, thirteen lives whose futures never came to be.

_ What does it feel like,  _ she does not dare ask herself,  _ to know that all the yous in all the worlds are gone? _

_ Inexplicably,  _ she does not dare admit to herself,  _ it feels like overwhelming guilt _ .

“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispers to the blue walls pulsing all around her. It’s strange to think that so very recently she had not even given thought to the hers across the worlds—not  _ proper  _ thought, at least; she remembers the Aetherial Sea, and the specters of different hers and their lives floating all around. Were they all fake, then? Or did time not exist in the Sea and she was another dead girl in an abyss where all that was real had never had the chance to be—and therefore, never had the chance to die?

Her head aches along with the throbbing of her heart and the pit of despair in her belly. She had not meant to speak. Ahead, G’raha’s fingers still in their rapid dancing over controls only he knows how to handle. But it is only a moment, where she is acknowledged as only a girl and not as the Warrior. It passes between them, the space of all of half a second and the shuddering intake of her breath.

It always passes, and sometimes she wonders if there is any girl to her left.

The mammot at her feet brushes against the cloth of her pants, one hand extended with a fake flower clenched in it.  _ They’re only one gil,  _ she remembers the play going, the tiny replica at her feet acting out the fans’ most beloved three seconds of the entire saga.  _ What would my own most beloved three seconds  _ be, she thinks, reaching out to touch her fingers to the mammot’s cold hair.  _ There are so many three seconds of fame to my name. _

The mammot withdraws the flower back to its basket before she can grasp it, this fake act of kindness built into a ticking clock automaton. The Warrior thumps her head against the wall behind her, again and again.

_ I don’t want to be alone _ , she thinks. Of the hers and almost-hers across the thirteen shards; of the Scions she has been promised wait for her on the First; of Alisaie’s desperate clawing at staying awake, staying together—only for this to come in the end—just like before, she thinks of the sultana’s death and the flight out of the city, except back then she had Haurchefant and Alphinaud and even Tataru, but now—

Now—

“Warrior,” G’raha Tia, a mockery of her once friend speaks. His fingers have stopped their movements; the tower is silent, save for a humming she is not even certain does not originate from her own mind to fill the cavernous chamber. “It’s time.”

_ No,  _ she wants to say.  _ No more. I want to rest. I want to disappear. _

_ I don’t want to be the Warrior anymore. _

_ I don’t want to be me anymore. _

_ Let me disappear. _

The flower girl’s clock resets, and she smiles with a fake flower in hand. The Warrior stands up and dusts off her clothes, dusts off the glimmer and the shimmer of the crystal all around her.

“I’m ready,” she lies.

She thinks of Alisaie.

She thinks of the Scions.

She thinks of dying.  

_ Please, let me disappear. _

 


End file.
